Neat old 40 channel SSB CB i found

[K9FON]

A ham that i know has an old 40 CH SSB base CB radio that i might buy off of him for $20.00 simply because it is a really neat old rig. Im not really into CB but it will look neat in my radio collection.
It is a SBE Console V made back in the 1970s. I have never seen a rig like this before.
It is in a very slick looking woodgrain console and it looks like it was never used. The rig has no mic. with it but thats ok.
Has anyone ever heard of a company called SBE?
The ham got it from a estate sale of another ham that is now an SK. He got it along with a yaesu Ft 101E, a Siltronics 1011D, a tuner, and a Drake TR-4/ms-4/AC-4...

[kc7jty]

Is it a 40 channel? If so what pll chip is in it? It may be convertible to 10 meters.
I heard of them. Quite the radio in their day. I had an SBE mobile.

[K9FON]

Its a 40 channel. I havent dug into it yet to see what the chip is. I dont plan to mod it. I will just leave it alone. An interesting thing i found out is it actually has a built in speech compressor.

[kc7jty]

I found it now can't figure where it was. Anyway it's a chip I'm not familiar with.
I'll bet that radio sold for at least $500 when it was new.
http://www.notpurfect.com/main/console5.html

[WØTKX]

That is a very cool radio. Ya BastiD!

[kc7jty]

This is the first ssb radio I owned. 23 ch converted to 40 with some extras. I can even remember the smell of it as it warmed up.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Lafayette-SSB-100-C ... 5ad3d5b9f3

[N8YX]

SBE - Sideband Engineers - made some decent ham gear in the 60s and 70s.

Had a Console V for a while. Almost any non-"ROM" style PLL of that era can be easily put on 10M and your SBE is no exception.

[kb2vxa]

Yup yup, the early PLL chips were easy to figure out, they could be easily expanded above and below "center frequency" and often provided channels well outside the rig's operational range. Many could be split by 5KHz increments if you knew which pins went high and which went low. One thing though, most rigs from the early 70s such as this can't do 10M without re tuning and you must be VERY careful working with synths if you want to keep spurs out of the picture, DON'T MESS WITH THE TRAPS! Best get a Sams for it before applying the golden screwdriver. Heh, then you'll have two collector's items, the Sams may be worth more than the rig. (;->) Oh, don't be surprised to find the same PC board in there as half a dozen mobile rigs and a 12V power supply, it just might turn out to be a Sidebander II in a big box. As an aside the Tram Titan II was the best laugh of them all, a huge, impressive boat anchor box full of air!

Nice looking radio, I like it.

[WØTKX]

The CB in my '73 Opel Manta... I helped it out a little (not much), it was a good little radio.



A HyGain V was used as a base, and sometimes went mobile. It didn't fit so well in that little car, as I had a 2 meter rig in there as well.

[kc7jty]

My second SSB radio, SBE LCMS4:

I got rid of it in a couple months, it was a pos.